Cooper, Elisa 2013. Pronouncing printed words: investigating a semantic contribution to adult word reading. PhD Thesis University of East London School of Psychology

Authors

Cooper, Elisa

Type

PhD Thesis

Abstract

When considering print-to-sound word reading, orthography and phonology are obviouslyinvolved. However, another system, that of semantic memory, might also be involved inorthography-to-phonology computation. Whether this occurs is debated in the literatureboth in the interpretation of behavioural results (e.g., Monaghan & Ellis, 2002; Strain et al.,1995) and in the implementation of semantic memory within computational models of wordreading (Coltheart et al., 2001; Plaut et al., 1996). The central aim of this thesis was toinvestigate whether there is a semantic contribution to orthography-to-phonologycomputation in healthy adult word reading. Experiments 1-4 used a semantic primingdesign in which a picture prime was followed either two trials later (Experiments 1, 3, and 4)or one trial later (Experiment 2) by a word target, and this investigated priming of variousword types. Regression investigations explored whether semantic features and imageabilitywere unique significant predictors of ELexicon single word reading reaction times whilestatistically controlling for age-of-acquisition. The two ERP experiments (Experiments 5and 6) investigated the neurocorrelates of imageability and semantic features and whetherthere are semantic effects early in the time-course of low frequency word reading.Experiments 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 and the regression investigations show evidence of a semanticcontribution to low frequency regular and low frequency exception word reading. There isalso some suggestion of a semantic contribution to high frequency word reading(Experiment 2 and Regression analyses). From the results of the three lines of investigation,it is concluded that semantic information is involved in healthy adult word reading, andthese results are best accommodated by the connectionist triangle model of word reading.These investigations also provide information concerning various word types and factorsthat contribute to “easy” and “difficult” words, semantic memory models and their accountsof priming, and the measures, age-of-acquisition, imageability, and semantic features.